[Reuters]

Published date: 23rd Jul 1987

23 July 1987

Reuters News

English

(c) 1987 Reuters Limited

MANILA, July 23, Reuter – Protests by both landowners and poor farmworkers mounted today over the Philippines’ land reform program, while the country’s new Congress threatened to review all decrees signed by President Corazon Aquino.

Hours after Aquino signed the land reforms into law yesterday, hundreds of supporters of the Council of Landowners for Orderly Reform gathered in Manila to sign a resolution with their blood, vowing to fight implementation of the program.

The landowners said they would not comply with the decree’s requirement that they file their land titles with the government within six months. They threatened to cut down fruit-bearing trees and destroy crops if their lands were forcibly divided.

The powerful Philippine Peasants’ Movement (KMP) and other farmers’ groups meanwhile denounced the land­ sharing reforms as inadequate and said thousands of protesters would stage an “indignation rally” near the presidential palace tomorrow.

The protests revived memories of last January, when 13 farmers were shot dead by government troops as KMP supporters demanding speedy land reform tried to storm barricades on a bridge leading to the palace.

On sugar-growing Negros island, where falling world prices have triggered recession and thrown thousands of farmworkers out of work, Roman Catholic Bishop Antonio Fortich said landlords and peasants might unite against the reforms.

“There is opposition from landowners, that is certain,” Fortich told a local radio station.

“Bacolod (the island’s capital) is peaceful right now but there will be trouble because I heard small farmers and labour unions will stage a rally at the end of this month. If they unite with the planters, that will be a huge rally,” he said.

The decree, signed just five days before Aquino’s sweeping legislative powers are to be curbed by the new Congress, was silent on the controversial question of the size of land holdings.

It tacked coconut and sugar plantations on to existing laws covering rice and corn land, but left to Congress the job of deciding ideal farm sizes for different crops, a time-table for the program, and the scale of compensation for landowners.

Francisco Sumulong, an uncle of Aquino and Majority Floor-leader in the House of Representatives, told reporters the new Congress, due to convene on Monday, would review all decrees issued by the Aquino government since it took power last year.

Sumulong said congress wanted to start with a clean slate and would also review and if necessary repeal more than 1,000 “unjust, unnecessary and irrelevant” decrees issued by former President Ferdinand Marcos.